I’m cleaning out my closet today.
What started as needing to find a specific sweatshirt for my daughter has morphed into this:
Clothes released from the confines of every drawer.
Piles scattered all over the green velvet comforter.
Three trash bags of clothes (that I honestly swear were bought by someone else) stand by the door.
And about two dozen single socks.
I started by emptying the sock drawer, fully anticipating I would have several stray socks.
Years ago, I would have been adamant about finding the matching socks almost immediately.
Years before that, I likely wouldn’t have even cared. I’d have clumped them all together in a drawer and waited for when I needed a pair to deal with the matter.
But, as I slowly made my way through the clothes piles, I discovered matches.
Match after match.
I dutifully worked my way from pile to pile– from jeans to tops to athleisure– finding socks all along the way that matched.
The writer in me, who can’t perform a single task without digging to find a lesson within it, marveled at the process. Socks were reappearing, seemingly out of nowhere– divinely, maybe serendipitously gravitating towards one another.
There was no forcing. No manhunt. It happened seamlessly, all on its own, as I kept showing up to the next pile.
Isn’t that so much of life?
So much of what we spend our precious energy fretting over ends up working itself out. All on its own. All in its season. All in the right timing.
But we need frequent reminders. We force, and we push. We try to take matters into our own hands and do things before we’re ready to do them. We give in to this pressure, this belief that we must have it all figured out– everything has to match and fit to proceed.
And yet, life teems with the “not yet” and the “not right now.” Many days, there are just piles to tend to, even though we’re largely unsure of how to make other things fit.
…
When the room was cleared, one lone sock sat in the middle of the floor. Black with two white stripes at the ankle. I scooped it up and tucked it into the sock drawer. An ode to one day finding its match. Not even ten minutes later, standing in my daughter’s room, I spied the other sock on her dresser. Completely out of place but perfectly on time. I smiled. A God wink.
…
So, the real question: Did I arrive in your inbox today to talk about socks?
Yes. Socks, and other things, and prompting for the one who needs to read it:
Things are going to fall into place.
Embrace the pile right in front of you– it’s all you really can do.
Be gentle with yourself in the process.
Leave space for the missing socks of your life, for all that feels unsettled right now.
Things are sorting themselves.
Not with force or shoving. Not before they’re ready.
